Tuesday, October 7, 2014

CASE STUDY: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE TO SUPPORT DATA GOVERNANCE

Increasingly, the flow of data is now from supplier to manufacturer to customer to consumer—a.k.a. B2B2B2C. The data attribute types range from regulatory to logistical to marketing. For example, government regulations such as EU 1169 require that online data from manufacturer to customer to consumer must be consistent. The Global Data Synchronous Network (GDSN), once a logistical data sharing tool for barcode information, is now providing attributes specific to industries and is encompassing hundreds of attributes which will reach into the thousands in a matter of years. Given that shoppers often begin on smart phones, retailers are using such data as a competitive edge. These retailers are also creating their own self-service portals for manufacturers to enter product data, and are asking for hundreds of attributes stored on ERP systems, legacy MDM systems and all too frequently Excel spreadsheets. All of which is increasingly applied by the retailer to scorecard the manufacturer’s data quality.

The largest companies in the world are struggling to even find such data, to identify the data owners, how to keep the data consistent, and manage the process to update the data when formulas change or new products are introduced. This presentation will discuss such “next generation” retail and supply chain challenges via topics such as: